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Shell Oil Co.'s acquisition of Pennzoil-Quaker State would bring to an end a storied half-century for the lubricants leader and its oil and gas predecessors.
Shell announced this week that Pennzoil-Quaker State will be absorbed into the unit of Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Once completed, the $1.8 billion cash deal will mark the final chapter in a colorful - and sometimes unprecedented - history.
Although performance has been mixed in recent years, the corporation known simply as Pennzoil for decades has reaped rewards ranging from incredible wildcatting success to improbable legal gushers.
The following are highlights - and low points - in the rapid ascent and gradual decline of Pennzoil.
* 1953 - Brothers Hugh and William Liedtke form Zapata Petroleum Corp. in Midland with another partner, a former oilfield equipment salesman named George H.W Bush. The three wildcatters buy acreage in West Texas on the future Jameson Field.
Bush and the Liedtkes drill 137 successful oil wells without a single dry hole.
In an apparently friendly separation, Bush later splits his share of the business into a new offshore drilling company. His Gulf of Mexico drilling operation becomes known as Zapata Corp.
* 1963 - An investment group led by Hugh Liedtke aggressively buys shares in South Penn Oil Co. He engineers the merger of Zapata Petroleum with South Penn Oil Co., then controlled by J. Paul Getty, one of the world's richest persons. Houston is picked for the headquarters of the much larger operation, renamed Pennzoil Co.
* 1965 - Staging America's first major hostile takeover, Pennzoil grabs for control of a company more than five times its size, United Gas Corp.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Hugh Liedtke waits until the day before Thanksgiving to make the unwelcome offer, "knowing that many United executives would be off for the long weekend duck hunting."
The stock-swap deal is...